Of course.
Why not?''
''Do you see the boy with the wave in his hair, that is natural, and he only pushes it a little, skillfully, to be more handsome?''
''I see him,'' the Colonel said.
''He is a very good painter, but he has false teeth in front because he was a little bit pederaste once and other pederastes attacked him one night on the Lido when there was a full moon.''
''How old are you?''
''I will be nineteen.''
''How do you know this?''
''I know it from the Gondoliere.
This boy is a very good painter, for now.
There aren't any really good painters now.
But with false teeth, now, in his twenty-fifth year, what a thing.''
''I love you very truly,'' the Colonel said.
''I love you very truly, too.
Whatever that means in American.
I also love you in Italian, against all my judgment and all of my wishes.''
''We shouldn't wish for too God-damn much,'' the Colonel said. ''Because we are always liable to get it.''
''I agree,'' she said. ''But I would like to get what I wish for now.''
Neither of them said anything and then the girl said, ''That boy, he is a man now, of course, and goes with very many women to hide what he is, painted my portrait once.
You can have it if you like.''
''Thank you,'' the Colonel said. ''I would love it.''
''It is very romantic.
My hair is twice as long as it has ever been and I look as though I were rising from the sea without the head wet.
Actually, you rise from the sea with the hair very flat and coming to points at the end. It is almost the look of a very nearly dead rat.
But Daddy paid him adequately for the portrait, and, while it is not truly me, it is the way you like to think of me.''
''I think of you when you come from the sea too.''
''Of course.
Very ugly.
But you might like to have this portrait for a souvenir.''
''Your lovely mother would not mind?''
''Mummy would not mind.
She would be glad to be rid of it, I think.
We have better pictures in the house.''
''I love you and your mother both very much.''
''I must tell her,'' the girl said.
''Do you think that pock-marked jerk is really a writer?''
''Yes.
If Ettore says so.
He loves to joke but he does not lie.
Richard, what is a jerk?
Tell me truly.''
''It is a little rough to state.
But I think it means a man who has never worked at his trade (oficio) truly, and is presumptuous in some annoying way.''
''I must learn to use the term properly.''
''Don't use it,'' the Colonel said. Then the Colonel asked, ''When do I get the portrait?''
''Tonight if you wish it.
I'll have someone wrap it and send it from the house.
Where will you hang it?''
''In my quarters.''
''And no one will come in and make remarks and speak badly of me?''